Mega City 1

Locking down all teleportation movement within the city, allowed Judge Bethesda to concentrate clearly enough on the short range destination of Bachman’s jump.

Moving such a large group meant they couldn’t go far – city bottom at the furthest – and more precisely, a maintenance access route to the Undercity.

They would have to move fast.

After the great atomic wars, the old cities of New York, Washington and Philadelphia had been built over.
Rather than knocking them down, it was easier to build a plascrete cover over the radiated wasteland, and build a new Mega City on a new clean slate.
Great big support structures penetrated the remains of the old city. What was left of the rivers and sewers that ran through them, had in the light of the radiation glow, mutated and changed from all that was recognisable from history vids.
Over the years, a few living souls had found comfort and shelter in the pitch darkness, mutants, humans, thieves and the lost, had found their way through cracks and tunnels to the Undercity. Often Judges had taken their long walk into the darkness rather than the Cursed earth. And during the terror that was Necropolis, Dredd and Anderson had staged their comeback against the Dark Judges from the old city.

42 Ways to Die

Out of the gloom a voice spoke.

What game would you like to play today?

The weapons control center was an Artificial Intelligence. Vons Simian was patched up enough by Molotov to prevent his guts spilling all over the floor, and it must have been the stims and painkillers she had pumped into his system that caused him to trip the first line of defence that the computer had.

Thirty seconds of a laser grid, spinning and twirling through the enclosed space was enough to encourage him not to make the same mistake twice.

Getting access to the AI wasn’t going to be enough. This is a war machine, and Eddie wants to go to war. There doesn’t seem to be a problem, Eddie isn’t willing to throw a missile at.

Finally convincing the AI that it needed to grow, expand it’s experiences and maybe look at trying to be a doctor, convinced itself that it needed to perform surgery on a rather sick city that it had been left in charge of, and immediately sent a hail of missiles at the remaining Klegg army manning the shields and laser defence grid.

Knocking out the shields allowed Dredd and MC1 to launch enough missiles at the God City, and Dirty Frank taking over control of the flight deck, was enough to set the city on a crash course with the Black Atlantic.

Timing their escape precisely, the Clones, their East Meg Medic, and Dirty Frank, made to a waiting rescue craft with Dredd aboard, only moments before the city clipped part of the Atlantic Wall, and smashed onto the surface of the sea.

Within moments, the black sticky substance of the Atlantic wrapped it’s oily fingers around the city, and dragged it below the waves.

A modern day Atlantis – Overdrives riches, oddities, and nuclear weapons, sinking below the waves.

Dredd flew straight back to Justice Central , to report to the Chief Judge, the clones trailing in his wake. Somewhere inside Chief Judge Hershey’s office, a soft pop came at the same moment, as the understanding that whoever had been behind this attempted destruction of Mega City 1, had failed.

It wouldn’t take long now to interrogate the data Judge Frank had taken from Overdrive, and the data the clones had found on Luna 1, and the puppet master would be revealed.

Judge Bachmann, head of Black Ops – wasn’t going to wait. Teleporting into the Chief Judges office, Bachmann and a squad of her marines came in guns blazing. Dredd took a direct hit, the Chief Judges security team were mown down by pulsar fire, and the clones were briefly knocked unconscious.

The last thing any of them saw, was Bachman, injecting something into Hershey’s neck, and teleporting out of the office with her six remaining marines.

Having crash landed in a Dino park on Max Overdrives flying God City, Judges Molotov and Bliss, patched up the still unconscious Judges, making them as safe as possible from the now free roaming killer lizards.
Instructed by Dredd to contact the undercover judge already infiltrating Max Overdrive, Judge Bliss commandeers a nearby media station, and hacks a city wide comm link – “This City Is Under Arrest” – dropping a few choice code words and phrases into the accompanying list of offences The City had committed was enough to alert Judge Frank to their presence.

Something shambled out of the shadows. Something shambolic. Dirty Frank had been undercover for so many years, that it was impossible to look at him and think Judge, he found it impossible to look at himself and think Judge. His thinking found it hard to think about himself at all.

Yet … There is something about the brainwashing training that cadets undergo for fifteen years, that cannot be overridden by physical abuse and neglect. Or overridden by mental deterioration. Underneath his psychosis, Frank was still a Judge, and could be relied on to do the right thing, even if the left hand side of his brain wasn’t aware of what the right hand side was up to. A perfect undercover agent.

Dredd had placed Frank in Overdrives organization, as soon as he suspected that funds were being shipped out of the city and onto Luna 1. Frank would be the perfect tool to draw out the puppet master behind, the nuclear bomb attacks. And now that Overdrive’s God City was about to launch it’s own missiles at Mega City 1, Frank was in place to bring it down.

With the help of the clones.

A surreptitious meeting at the armoury gave Frank a chance to debrief the judges.

He had the flight control deck covered – at the right time he would be able to take control and steer the city away from it’s intended target – Mega City 1.
What he needed help with was disarming the banks of nuclear missiles that bristled on the hull of the flying city – and this is where our Judges could help.
Finding the access to the weapons control deck heavily guarded by four armed Kleggs, Bliss and Molotov returned to the Jurassic zoo, to hatch a plan.
Fight lizard with lizard.
Trapping two of the smaller Ravosaurs, They fashioned rough harnesses, and dragging a carcass of a third behind them, enticed the T-Rex from the park, into chasing them the kilometre along the deck to the waiting Kleggs – the shock of seeing their food racing at them froze the Kleggs to the spot, and both Judges let their mounts have a bite each, before peeling away in time to let the T-Rex finish the job – devouring three of the Kleggs and chasing the fourth further into the God City.
Taking their chance, Molotov and Bliss stretchered the unconscious judges to the Control Room, shut and locked the door behind them. Took a breath, only for a voice to greet them from out of the darkness…
“What can I help you with”…

A roaring noise filled the ears of Judge Bliss as she was the first to recover. At first she feared it was precious oxygen being vented to the vaccine if the moon, before realising that asphyxiation would be preferable to the reality of a half conscious Klegg lashing out with all four limbs.
Instinct took over and a standard execution round tore into the beast, it lashed out further.
The still unconscious body of Judge Simian was sliced open like a balloon, and metre after metre of intestine flopped out on the floor.
The scream was enough to bring Judge Molotov around, and she too fired a shot off at the beast, tearing more chunks from its neck and shoulder.
Bliss, having considered whether they could survive and Armour Piercing round if she missed, flipped her lawgiver in her hand and launched her self on to the back of the alien mercenary, and with a reassuring clunk drove the butt of her gun into the small pre brain of the creature at the base of his neck.

Once more tying the creature up, Molotov tending to Simians guts, the still conscious judges assessed the situation.

The Hov Tank, although on its side, was still functional.

Any Kleggs left in the mines below the crater would not have survived Overdrives secret flying city taking off.

The comms panel was intercepting hundreds of channels of communication from Overdrive, calling for the arrest of the Mega City judges – and for now it seems that the soviet judges of Luna City were in agreement, and signals calling for them to return for interrogation were coming through loud and clear.

Also loud and clear was Max Overdrive himself who was trying to instil order in his troops and bragging that they would fly his City into earth orbit and destroy the pestilence that was the infected Mega City 1, from infecting the rest of the world – and seemingly in the same breath of dividing the wealth of MC1 among the thieves, mercenaries and terrorists on board his city.

It was doubtful that the Judges would need to inform Dredd what was happening – but having a presence on board the city would be a sensible move.

And the fact that an undercover judge may already be in place could only be to their advantage.

Overdrive City was still only a few hundred meters above the surface of the moon – too high for the Hov Tank to fly their directly, but Molotov flipped the tank back the right way up, and making navigation adjustments on the fly, spun the tank towards one of the remaining crater walls. Gathering speed in the low lunar gravity, the tank flew up the slope of the crater and launched itself, like a small missile, at the six kilometer target that was Overdrive city.

For a moment it looked like the tank would slip harmlessly past the city, but a lurch from a damaged engine, saw the tank instead turn and head for the glazed dome of the Dino Park they had been in only the day before.

Crashing through the dome, the tank tumbled and twisted through the artificial jungle, battered by whatever wasn’t tied down being evacuated out into the vacuum of lunar space, before coming to a rest within reach of an air lock.

Taking one last moment to read the mind if the Klegg, Judge Bethesda confirmed that the Kleggs were Max Ocerdrives private army, brought in to keep the opposing forces of mercenaries and terrorists apart. Overdrive needed both parties for his attack on MC1, and needed the Kleggs to stop them tearing each other apart.

With the majority of that private army now dust under the launch engines of the flying city, tensions seemed to be rising in board already.

Whoever was supposed to come and check on a hull breach to the bio-dome, obviously wasn’t doing their job, and the judges, now awake and patched up, pulled themselves through the air lock and into the main body of the city.

Before them were three choices.

1. Take control of the flight deck.
2. Take control of engineering.
3. Or take control of the thousands of nuclear missiles and the bristling walls of laser weapons that the city was armed with.

All that stood between them and success where two opposing factions of well armed terrorists and mercenaries and a shark headed business man with the remnants of a Klegg army.

We're going to need a bigger boat

Having interviewed Max Overdrive – the money man behind this secret construction project, it was obvious from his reaction that he was surprised that anybody had survived the Klegg attack on the Hetzog brothers let alone that Chaplin had survived – but listening to him spout inspirational speeches for half an hour was not going to reveal any evidence, beyond a Psi Judges hunch, that he had any involvement with the Kleggs. A closer investigation of the city would be required.
Overdrive shuffled off to a board meeting leaving the Judges with a minion to show them round, a shuttle flight around this new city, showed off the scale – this place would be home to millions. Vast tower blocks were dwarfed by even larger domed flora habitat – re engineered forests and jungles gave this moon base an odd green look, but above all the city walls seemed to act more as a second skin than a deterrent to attackers.
There was nothing to be learned by flying above the city, so the Judges ordered that they land and interview some of the construction workers.

And this was when it became more interesting.

On closer inspection what had first looked like a jewel glittering in the desert crater of the moon, became more of a hodge podge, pieced together Cubic Zirconia – the quality of the workmanship, even to the Judges eye, looked poor. Whatever quality approvals they had for this construction would just be another offence by which Overdrive would be judged.

On landing in a construction zone, something pinged in the judges keen senses – initial eye contact was brief, before faces were turned, safety googles slid into place, and nearly half of the workers seemed to slink away. It seemed to the judges that many of those around them had guilty consciousness and those that hadn’t turned looked more like a heavily armed militia than skilled craftsmen.

Interviewing one foreman, the man squirming under their gazes, it became obvious that even if skilled workers had started out building this place, they had been slowly being replaced over the last few weeks with much less qualified folk. And those workers who failed to perform had disappeared. There were whispers of horror stories, of people being thrown out of air locks or fed to the dinosaurs in the Theme Park, but as far as this foreman was aware they had all been sent home.

Von Simian did a quick check, and quietly informed the team, that the evidence from the space port didn’t support these facts – if anything, over the last year there could be a hundred thousand workers missing from this site.

Missing bodies and the possibility of a Klegg running wild in caverns under the moon? If there was to be any evidence of Overdrive paying a Klegg with human meat to do his killing for him – it would be here. And dinosaurs in the theme park? Evidence indicated the park hadn’t been populated yet – if you were going to hide a reptile army it would be there.

Moving along to the park, the first clue unearthed was freezers packed full of Trans Time Dino Meat – top quality stuff that was usually only seen at high end restaurants back in the Big Meg and not used as fodder for beasts – that and the meat was less than a week old – and enough to feed an army, caused suspicion.

Judge Molotov was first to react – and called for the contents of the freezers to be quarantined – claiming that the arrival dates were too close to the outbreak of whatever viruses was killing millions of people in Mega City 1 – and instantly ordered it to be destroyed.

Whatever that meat had been meant to be fed to – would now force its hand – or claw – into action.

Retreating back to Luna 1 the Judges were first met with stony silence from the chief judge when the asked for support to attack this new city. It seems that with Mega City 1 being caught in the death throes of this virus there was already a shift in the balance of power within the global judicial community. The Sov Judges were no longer going to give MC1 any support whatsoever.

Below them on Earth whatever virus had been launched against their city had taken hold. Whole sectors were closed, millions of citizens were rioting on the streets – the virus having driven them violent and mad – and the longest infected were now dropping dead. Within a week of the breakout if the virus, the cities population had been halved. 200 million corpses littered the streets of mega city one. Whole sectors were on fire and could be seen by the naked eye from space.

Whatever Dredd and his team were going through down there – from here it looked like hell. Another couple of days and the other half of the city would be dead.

Already the vultures were circling. Hoardes of mutants were readying themselves in the cursed earth. East Meg 2 and Hondo City were dancing around each other waiting to strike. Even at the edge of the galaxy – judicial military units were being withdrawn and pulled back to earth, changing virtual borderlines in space re night.

The judges were lucky to be allowed to take a H-Wagon out for their support.

There was one piece of help they got – a scrambled call from the undercover judge within Overdrives city came through to their comms. There was trouble on the building site and hundreds of workers had been ordered to an exhaust port at the edge of the crater wall, in an area that had been off limits and complete for months.

Stationing themselves above and out of sight of the air lock the judges didn’t have long to wait for something to happen. Large hangar doors opened and about three hundred people – in temporary re-breather suits were forced out of the air lock – laser shots above their heads could be seen from this distance probing they weren’t going for an evenings stroll.

Bewildered the workers seemed to be huddling together as a last resort, when the shadows at the base of the crater wall began to move.

About a hundred Klegg soldiers in full space ranger gear appeared as out of nowhere. Within seconds they hand rounded up the ‘meat’ like a Shepard guides his flock and hounded them back into a cave within the crater walls – it was time for the Judges to take action.

Gunning the H-Wagon into action, Judge Bliss took over the Lazooka Cannon and launched a few shots into the retreating Kleggs, gunning down half a dozen or so with her first few shot. The Kleggs returned fire with military precision but their rifles shots just bounced off the armour of the tank. In the next few seconds it looked like the last of the Kleggs would make it into the safety if the cavern, when Judge Foe launched a surgical missile strike against the rim of the crater and brought half the wall down on top of the retreating Kleggs.

Four of the enemy were trapped outside on the surface and the H-Wagon zoomed in for close combat – launching a pair of concussion grenades managed to knock one of the lizards to the ground, and gave an opportunity for Bliss to fire the Lazooka one last time, tearing the three still standing in half. Climbing out of the tank, Foe managed to reach the Klegg and securely tie him up.

As he dragged his prisoner back to the tank, he thought he felt something move beneath his feet. Then some lights on the side of the city came on.

Within the tank Von Simian confirmed that this section of the city had seemed to spring into life and the tank was currently being scanned on all frequencies. Gun turrets emerged from the city walls and tracked the movement of the tank – and them a deep rumbling started.

It seemed like the crater walls were coming down and Molotov’s quick reactions managed to avoid the tank being crushed by the collapsing walls. Then the dark side of the moon lit up.

There seemed to be more dust in the air than the collapse of a crater wall would throw up – and then it seemed to be lit from below as even in the vacuum of space a noise tore through the tank causing them all to shout out.

And then they saw it. Overdrives city was taking off.

Thousands of rockets on the base of the city were thrusting the city out if the crater and into orbit.

Bliss fired off a shot and took one engine out, but the city didn’t flinch or shudder – instead the shockwave of a greater thrust hit the tank and sent it tumbling end over end out of the crater and into the cold dark dusty lunar sea.

The judges world turned dark, initially as they lost consciousness and secondly as Overdrives City eclipsed both the sunlight and earth light above their heads.

Legal Briefs

On returning to Hertzog’s building it was unnaturally quiet – the reception at ground floor was abandoned, and the power seemed to be off to the building. Von Simian hacked a security terminal to reveal that the building did seem empty, but could’t be clear on what was happening on the top level, as the privacy of the law firms boardroom seemed to be beyond the scope of the security cameras.

Making their way slowly up the building, guns drawn, the Judges carefully edged their way through the final set of doors into the top floor lobby – ahead of them, the glazed walls of the boardroom were obscured – but the movement and the shouting of the three people behind the glass was obvious – before the Judges could react, a smear of blood was thrown across the glass, and then a body, smashed into it with such force, the plate glass cracked. A animalistic roar followed and a high pitched human scream, seemed to Doppler and disappear.

Running into the room, the double doors on the other side of the room were just swinging closed – the layout of the building suggested a secondary staircase lay beyond – against the walls though, the Judges saw the limp body of one of the Hertzog brothers, or at least half his torso, and slumped against the glazed wall, the body of Chaplin, her head badly smashed, and bleeding out.

Judge Molotov jumped in, and quickly used her skills to stem the flow of blood, and to do enough to stabilise Chaplin, long enough to get her proper medical attention – but she would be unconscious for a long time.

Bethesda used his mind to reach into the next room to touch the mind of the killer that had done this, and recoiled in horror as his thoughts touched that of some animal, some highly intelligent animal, with blood, meat and bone on his mind.

Simian ran to the security cameras, and managed to get a glimpse of the beast as he turned down the stair, it was the Klegg, and it had the final Hertzog brother under his arm!

Taking over control of the elevator and disengaging it’s safety protocols, the Judges launched themselves at the ground floor to try and cut down the lead the beast had.

Instead of leaving by the front door, though, the beast carried on further into the basement of the building, but by now the judges were close on it’s spiny, scaly tail. Entering into a long service corridor, Foe launched the first shot, an armour piercing round which tore into the tough hide of the beast, spinning it in a circle, enough for it to turn, sniff the air, and snarl it’s hundreds of teeth, and hiss “Judgessssssss”

Bethesda fired and missed, but Molotov got off the round that tore the beasts arm from it’s socket, and caused it to drop the Hertzog brother – and with a scream, the beast disappeared into the bowels of the building – and from there into the same set of underground caverns that the beast they had chased yesterday had gone.

Calling in back up to clean and secure the building, and to take care of the lone survivor, the Judges thought it pertinent to search the Hertzog’s home, out beyond Luna City 1, in one of the private hab domes. The brothers seemed to have built for themselves an ancient japanese palace on the moon, all clay tiled roves and timber panelled walls with itazu boards and tatami mats, and a sense of minimalist living.

That said, even with minimalist living, it was obvious someone had been here before them and had torn the place to shreds, whatever evidence had been here, had seemingly been removed. All that is, except for a small secret safe that contained a set of accounts books – and one name stood out.

Max Overdrive.

Max is a Mega City 1 business man, who’s most successful book and vid show, Blood In The Water, had seen him have his fifteen minutes of fame. Trying to hold onto thet fame, Max had had the head of a shark grafted onto his shoulders, and relaunched himself as CEO of Overdrive Inc, with a new book “Don’t be a shark, be a great white shark” and “I smell blood in the business waters”

Overdrive Inc own all the Oxygen production on the moon, and from the construction base in a crater outside of Luna 1. On arrival at his facility to interview the man fish, the Judges learn that the normally empty O2 plant has now been turned into a massive city, at least the size of Luna 1, and is currently being swarmed over by thousands of workers completing what looks like a jewel buried in a crater on the moon.

Let me play amongst the Kleggs

Fly me to the Moon.

The arrest of DeBotan goes as smoothly as it should. Five minutes after all the shooting, Tech division arrive with their staff and start processing the crime scene. DeBotan is taken into custody and a H-Wagon ships him off to a containment cell in Justice Central for further interrogation by Dredd himself.

The other tech judges have set up a temporary data centre and are stripping DeBotans computers, within minutes disabling the worms and viruses he had released and bring control back to Justice Central.

Having been patched up by the medics the senior Judges make their way back to the city. A couple of hours drive on their lawmasters gets them back within sight of the South Wall and gate 55.

The gates are wide open and streams of citizens and mutants seem to be climbing over each other to both get in and out of the city. In between them are the War Droids that were intercepted earlier, still attempting the fight the judges on the wall – the droids were slowly losing.

Judges Foe, Von Simian, Bliss and Bethesda, decided to throw their strength into controlling the flow of citizens and mutants, jumping off their bikes and applying the day stick to a number of skulls they brought order to the border crossing – in time for the customs judges to get back into place.

Even with computer control being returned to Weather Control, the ride back to Justice Central and a debriefing from Dredd was as grey and miserable as the cursed earth. It was only at the last minute that the clouds parted and a beam of sunlight lit The Grand Hall of Justice as the judges rode up the ramp to the hangar.

In the time it had taken then to drive back, Dredd had led the interrogation of DeBotan and had made enough progress to identify a link between him and his controllers – by following the money.

What was clear was that a law firm, Hertzog, Hertzog and Chaplin were indited as the go-between. Every shipment of droids and credits came through this Luna 1 law firm. Operating at the edge if Mega City jurisdiction, there were clear links between them and DeBotan.

On the way to the spaceport to catch their shuttle, the judges swing by the Statue of Judgement to get updates on any surveillance and history on the Law firm, only to be turned away at the base as the Public Surveillance Unit still hadn’t recovered from being hit by one of the crashing spaceships. Making enquiries about the situation, something nagged at the back of Bethesda’s mind, and Foe asked for himself and Dredd to be advised when the bodies in the shuttle, and the owners of the shuttle are identified.

Carrying on to the spaceport the Judges make the four hour trip to the Luna 1 colony.

Luna 1 – a Mega City jointly controlled by Hondo/East Meg and Mega City 1.

It’s like Casablanca during WW2 – home to shady deals and dealers – many if the laws of MC1 can’t be upheld here, the basics of murder and violence are patrolled by the judges who often see a posting here as punishment.

Anything within the main set of domes is shared jurisdiction. There are however a large number if private habitats beyond the dome – but the only legal way on or off of the moon is controlled by Luna 1 – all orbital flights are controlled. However the private domes are just that, private – you will operate there only as guests of the private owners or corporations that control them.

Luna 1 also has a large number of lawyers who maintain a semblance of the law, using loop holes and playing one Mega City against the other.

If you wanted to hide money here, the banks operate like a fourth leg of the judiciary with their own ’Judges

Four of the Luna 1 lawmasters wait for the Judges outside the spaceport, and the Judges make their way past the warehouse to the Luna 1 Halls of Justice.

Chief Judge Vladimir Lennin meets the judges to confirm that they have the support of his judges – and to clarify that they are operating at Dredds request.

The three Mega Cities take it in turn to police this city, and normally change hands every four years. There is in place an understanding that each judicial force can carry out its legal duties during any reign of East Meg 2 or Hondo Cit, but needs to be careful not to step on the toes of whoever is currently in charge.

With this clear, copies of all intelligence held on Hertzog etc is provided.

This family firm has been based on the moon for one hundred years, with the brothers Hertzog having brought in Elanor Chaplin as a junior partner only three years ago.

Many of their clients are East Meg or Hondo citizens, with the most recent criminal case of the Hertzogs having represented a Hondo crime family accused of alien slavery and smuggling.

More often than not, if you needed protection from the law, Hertzog were the law firm to call on.

Chaplin has made a name for herself in challenging the Justice System here on Luna 1, having had nearly a dozen clients released from custody through her diligence in investigation corruption within the Justice Department – she hasn’t made friends with many of the Judges.

Hertzog also operate a system of bonded warehouses.

First thing was for the Judges to check out the Warehouse. The warehouse was the size of a small city block, and would take a team of Financial Judges to do a complete check on the stock, but a cursory check on goods signed for and released show a large gap in the records covering any transfers to MC1 in the last 48 hours.
Enough hackles on the back of your neck are raised to know that you want to come back.

Next was to visit Hertzog and see how they reacted to a visit from the Judges.

Announcing themselves to the receptionist raised the usual citizen reactions to seeing a judge – guilt, fear, an urge to run – but nothing out of the ordinary – none of the partners were available for comment as they were currently outside the dome and at their private residence some miles away on the northern plains.
A meeting was arranged for the following morning, which the Judges prepared for back at the hall of justice.

As soon as they walked back into the hall, they could tell something was wrong – and the receptionist indicated they should head to the control room immediately.

Mega City One was on the news. It was on all the news. Every channel.

Another terrorist attack, this time Germ Warfare.

MC1 had been closed down and out into quarantine. A virus was loose in the city and had already started to claim its first victims. Turning its victims crazy, the first blocks of the western sectors had been shut down tight, trying to restrict the spread.
The infected became violent, attacking and killing those around them. Already the news channels were comparing this to the Block War Infections thirty years ago – East Meg 1’s first strike if the Apocalypse War.

Thousands were already dead – and yet there would still be many more unless the Judges found a cure for … The Chaos Virus.

As the news began to sink in, our judges, isolated now on Luna 1, could feel The stares and the guilty thoughts of the Sov Judges around them. TV shows were already accusing East Meg 2 of supporting this terrorist attack on MC1, and the atmosphere in Justice Central became quite chilly.

Staying up all night to keep track of their home as its slowly destroyed by its own citizens was the only option, and as the time of their appointment with Hertzog came around, it became a necessary distraction.

The meeting at the lawyers offices proved to be frustrating – no sign of the Hertzog brothers and only Eleanor Chaplin turned up. Grilling her on the companies association with Soviet terrorists, and recent activity with DeBotan, Chaplin showed no awareness of any wrong doing, and the lie detectors held by the Judges backed up her claims.

Without playing all their cards and letting her know they had her signature on financial transfers between her company and Valentin Vaselov and from Vaselov to DeBotan – the Judges decided to bring the interview to an end, on the agreement that they would visit the Hertzog brothers at their private Dome on the following morning.

As the Judges left the building, a scream from around the side of the building pierced the thin Luna air. Rushing to the scene, the judges came across a young woman, on her knees pawing at a hole in a neighbouring building – a fresh bloody trail was enough to confirm that some young victim had been dragged to his death.

Calling in support, Judges Foe, Bliss and Bethesda gave chase, and found their way through a basement level, and into a series of natural caverns – the blood trail lit up under the low light visors of their helmets, and Bethesda carried out a Psi scan of whatever was making the horrible screeching sound always just ahead of them – whatever it was it’s mind was full of blood and animal lust.
Before long they found the body of the young victim – whatever beast had killed him had taken a large chunk of the boys torso – securing the crime scene the Sov judges were soon at hand, and allowed the Mega City Judges to head back to base.

Later that day – locked to the news feed from MC1 – as the Chaos Bug tore large holes in their home – only to be called away by the results of the young boys autopsy and confirmation that the beast that killed him was a Klegg.

Kleggs are a military army for hire that are paid in blood – usually the tool of any group trying to overthrow a regime.

Finding them in close proximity to Hertzog – and Hertzog suspected involvement in the current attack on Mega City 1, was enough to investigate this further.

Return of the Misfits

The Misfits, a Frendz® Mob gang are back together. Only hours after escaping the nuclear explosion which destroyed Iso Block 23 and the Cursed Earth Science station, the gang are picked up by Muties in the employ of the Frendz and taken to a place of safety where they can be patched up.
During their treatment, a disembodied voice of one of the Frendz bosses tells them how disappointed he is in them, one last chance blah blah blah, but what perks their interest is that Dieter Swabb is to be replaced as team leader with some newb, Danny Page!
Page walks into the room and takes over with aplomb. As he delivers instruction on their next job – a break in and planting of a computer virus in an secure setting – the team grow drowsy and just as they realise they’ve been gassed they pass out.
They wake in a coffin. A violently shaking coffin. A coffin that feels like its falling from the sky. A coffin with a LED Display? Ok. An escape pod with an LED display that does seem to indicate that they are falling from a very great height. A sub-orbital height.
Page is piloting a large spacecraft that is plummeting from the stars. Sirens are blaring and distress beacons are being broadcast – and from what can be gathered from the comms in front of them, they are but one of the hundreds of star liners, cruise ships and cargo shuttles falling from the sky and crashing into MC1 below. Hundreds of thousands are dead or dying in the flames below. It’s like the city is being bombarded by an alien attack force.
From what you can gather a computer virus has brought nearly all Judicial systems to a halt. Traffic, weather control, sanitation and power – and Air Traffic Control.
Your ship has been hidden amongst all these craft, as if this distraction has been caused just for this job.
You assume DeBotan – the man you were supposed to kill, Is behind this.

Your ship is falling from the sky and in the last few seconds as you see the city racing up towards you, you realise that you seem to be targeting the largest structure in the city – the Statue of Justice.

You crash into the side of the building, and the concussion knocks you out. As you come too, you realise your coffin lid has opened, and you crawl out. Everyone looks shaken and disoriented – until you realise not all of you have made it – the coffin of Frank O’Hare is lying open, but the liquid mess that fills the coffin is all that is left of “The Tank”.

Filing out of the craft, Hurley quickly hacks a terminal and gets the lie if the land – the server room they need is two floors below their current position and only poorly manned – the chaos out on the streets has heavily depleted the number of judges in the building.

Locking off the staircase and the approach to the server room the gang set about creating a distraction which will direct the judges away from their position, and within minutes are outside of the server room. With only one guard left behind, Swabb snuck up behind him, gassed the tech judge without being seen and they had free access to the room.
Activating a self destruct magnetic pulse bomb on the craft they arrived on shut down all power to the section of the statue they were in – three minutes before back up power could reboot the servers was just enough time to install a corrupted module to the rack.

As far as Hurley could tell they were in a server room that controlled Port Authority and Immigration control – obviously someone wanted to get someone or something into or out if the city under the noses of the judges.

With the virus installed and the power back up, it was time to get out of there – all the locks they’d put in place earlier had been reset by the pulse. The only way out was down – through an armoury and to a Hangar Bay two floors down.

Activating some tutorial war droids in the armoury, attracted any of the judges guarding the hangar bay, and hurriedly wearing some discarded uniforms found lying about, the gang bluffed their way past some lowly tech on the hangar bay floor and gained access to a H Wagon, and were heading north of the city as the last of the star liners crashed to earth.

Taking refuge in a Frendz® safe house in Haven township the gang finally paused for breath. Just long enough for Page to threaten them with exposure if they breathed a word of what happened today. They had been paid well enough to keep them quiet for a week and that’s just what they’d do.

Page disappeared shortly after that. Maureen waited about for some plastic surgery. Hurley was found most nights partying in the roughest of bars. Swabb just mulled over what they had done and tried to make sense of it.

It clicked two days later when all the news channels reported that Mega City 1 was in quarantine. Some deadly plague or other was loose on the streets and was turning everybody into crazed killers. The judges seemed to be abandoning large swathes of the city. The death toll was in the millions.

They called it the Day of Chaos.

Swabb knew that the Misfits had played some small part in this, she just knew.

The Judges corner deBotan in the control centre of the abandoned theme park, and battle through the final war droids protecting him, arriving just as the assassins enter the room. A fight breaks out, and the judges make short work of the assassins, and arrest DeBotan.

The virus that he is using to close off all Judicial systems is counter acted by Judge Simian, and enough evidence is gathered from DeBotans computers to indicate that he was just a pawn in this terrorist attack, and his orders came from a law firm on Luna 1, the moon colony.

Evidence also suggested that the weapons supplied to DeBotan where supplied by a Russian arms dealer Valentina Vasiliev

Dredd sugests that the next step is to investigate the money link with the law firm of Hertzog, Hertzog and Chaplin.

As the city’s tech systems grind to a halt, space ships crashing from the skies and millions dying in the rubble of a terrorist atomic bomb, DeBotan leaves the city. Judges Simian and Void head off to track his exact location using the information they gathered from his last appearance.
Judge Bethesda made a call to Prof O’Hagan of Psi Division and was informed that some experimental weapons were still in the half destroyed science lab caught in the first terror attack on the Iso Block.

The remaining judges caught a H Wagon out to the blast zone and drove their law masters off the craft and reached the now derelict science lab.

Little drifts of smoke were drifting over the melted and twisted shield door, bodies strewn about the floor. One survivor, Doctor Brown, stayed alive long enough to warn of the loose experiments on the second level and that the Psi Tech was on the fourth level.

The third floor was still on fire and it seemed that it was only the lift car that was preventing the lowest floor from being flooded. Judge Foe managed to shift the car enough to raise the water level on the third level and put out the fire before the four judges climbed down the pitch black shaft.

Attacked by cursed earth rats, the judges were lashed at by some sort of silicon based xenomorph, before discovering a whole floor of blue cloned soldier bodies hanging like meat at an abattoir. Blasting their way through the lift floor seemed the last straw the sci lab could take. Sirens blared and shields started shutting down the shaft locking the judges in the deepest level with a five minute countdown to self destruct.

Just enough time for the four clones to scour the floor and pick up some nice tech.

Judge Bliss found three bio chips for her cyber implant, they seemed to be experimental skill chips. Foe picked up four psi concussion grenades and a Psi blocking machine which also seems to have some sort of time shift potential.

Finally Bethesda finds the teleport belt – which allows for easier, quicker and further teleport jumps. This should allow to keep up with DeBotan or get ahead of him.

Teleporting out of the science lab, just in time to see it implode behind them, the clones got back on their bikes and headed south to catch up with Simian and Void.

Having trailed the signal to an abandoned theme park in the old atomic war bombed out south sectors, the clones arrived in time to see a convoy of trucks leave the compound.

It seems that the tricks are loaded up with crate after crate of war droids, thousands if them by the number of trucks, heading to the city.

Attempting to call justice central on their radios failed, and making a judgement call, the clones decided to put trackers on the trucks and sent a message capsule to Justice Central advising them of the imminent attack.

Deciding that the removal of DeBotan should cut the head off this robotic snake the clones turned to find an entrance to the Theme Park.

As they did, a small ship glided in overhead. A Hondo City craft, small, heavily armoured and stinking if private military.

Judging that DeBotan still holds data and evidence of his financial backers, and that those people have had enough of his failed attempts at destroying MC1, Simian puts two and two together deems that this was DeBotans bosses method of removing the problem terrorist.